Healthy Road Trip Snacks

If meal prepping during the week at home can be a little challenging, it can become a harder task when you are planning a trip with your family members.

No matter if you are traveling by car, train or airplane, you can still maintain healthy eating habits while away from your house. By choosing more balanced and nutritious options to snack on, you also guarantee more energy to enjoy your vacation.

Look at the options below and see what works for your budget and your family. All ingredients are SNAP-eligible.

Source: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/the-best-travel-snacks-for-eating-on-the-road

Car Trips

For car trips, make sure you don’t rely on fast food options, vending machines or gas station snacks. These may be convenient, but they are also loaded with sugar, salt, and saturated fats. Instead, snacks that you prepare and pack can ensure your family has healthy food choices and stays satisfied for longer car rides.

For these road trips, you can pack foods that can fit in a ziplock bag or in a cooler. Here are some options:

Bag: Applesauce, bag of veggie chips, containers of tuna, packets of unsalted nuts (like almonds, peanuts or cashews), homemade trail mix with dried fruit and cereal, peanut butter sandwiches on whole-grain bread, mini muffins, and granola bars are all great options too for   treats on the long drive.

Cooler: Fresh veggies (such as baby carrots or mini cucumbers), fresh fruits that don’t make a mess (bananas, apples, plums, apricots or grapes), yogurt tubes for easy clean up, low-fat string cheese or cheese slices, and whole grain wraps with deli turkey or chicken.

Airports or Train Stations

If you’re traveling by train or on an airplane, you can find stores at terminals that offer both healthy food along with others that offer fast food. Something to remember it is highly unlikely that vendors at these places will accept EBT and at airports, the food may be more overpriced than usual. You also cannot use an EBT card to make purchases on the train cafe or during in-flight services.

For those reasons, it makes more sense to also prepare your snacks beforehand. You won’t be able to bring a cooler through airport security, but here is a list of items you may bring on your carry on that don’t need to be refrigerated and can be placed in clear bags to pass security:

Carry on: Applesauce, bag of veggie chips or popcorn (low salt and no butter), containers of nuts, seeds and dried fruits, dark chocolate chips, sandwiches on whole grain bread, celery sticks, roasted chickpeas.

For any of these options of travel, don’t forget to also have plenty of water for everyone you are traveling with. At the airport you can bring an empty water bottle and fill it up at water stations once you pass TSA.

For questions about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or to receive SNAP Application Assistance contact the More In My Basket staff:

Visit: morefood.org

English Toll Free: 1-855-240-1451

Spanish Toll Free: 1-888-382-7105

Photo by Hillshire Farm on Unsplash